"I think its because programming has become a non-glamourous, non-respected profession. (Look at the wide use of the diminutive "coding" or "coder" and the patr

"I think its because programming has become a non-glamourous, non-respected profession. (Look at the wide use of the diminutive "coding" or "coder" and the patronizing words in the job applications "ninja rockstar"-- these are words you use with people you don't respect who you think are gullible. "You just might be the ninja rockstar coder we're looking for! And just because you're so special we'll be paying you 45 whole thousand dollars! Isn't that neat?"" While this leans a bit cynical, I do agree that it does accurately describe a considerable about of tech employment, and I really do think that this goes just as far toward explaining the lack of interest in software development positions as a failure of the educational system. So there are really two things going on - to get more people into software development: first, we need to massively improve access to a good educational system, second, we need to convince the people who can access this educational system to become programmers instead of dental hygienists, mortgage brokers, lawyers, nurses, structural engineers, or physicians. Keep in mind that in San Francisco, dental hygienists earn roughly the same salary as software developers at the median, and nurses earn considerably more [1]. There are still good reasons to want to be one rather than the other, but age discrimination, job stability, and work-life balance are not areas where software development shines. As it stands, I think it is critical to expand good educational opportunities, but I think that this will simply expand the number of people who decide that other career options are better. In short, we will go from having a lot of people who can't choose to become software developers because they don't have that educational opportunity to having a lot of people who choose not to become software engineers because they now have better opportunities. [1] check regional salary information at us news best jobs, which is a roundup of BLS data.